from the especially-when-you-are-outdoors dept.
A team at MIT are developing a wearable HVAC unit that will supposedly keep you at a comfortable temperature. From Wired:
Wristify, as they call their device, is a thermoelectric bracelet that regulates the temperature of the person wearing it by subjecting their skin to alternating pulses of hot or cold, depending on what’s needed. The prototype recently won first place at this year’s MADMEC, an annual competition put on by the school’s Materials Science and Engineering program, netting the group a $10,000 prize, which they’ll use to continue its development. It’s a promising start to a clever approach that could help alleviate a serious energy crisis. But as Sam Shames, the MIT senior who helped invent the technology, explains, the team was motivated by a more prosaic problem: keeping everyone happy in a room where no one can agree where to set the thermostat.
After freezing in the dentist's office this morning, I want one!
Related Stories
Sony Unveils Wearable Air Conditioner That Sits in a Shirt Pocket
[Tech] giant Sony has come up with a futuristic solution to the problem of staying cool: a tiny personal air conditioner that fits in a shirt pocket.
Sony calls its personal air conditioner the Reon Pocket, and it's worn just below a person's neck in the pocket of a special undershirt. Once the device is in place, the person can control it using a smartphone app.
According to Sony, the Reon Pocket can decrease a person's body surface temperature by 13 degrees Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit). It can also raise it by 8 degrees Celsius (about 14 degrees Fahrenheit) if you wanted to use the device in the winter months to stay warm.
Also at The Verge and Trusted Reviews.
Related: A Device to Obsolesce the Air Conditioner
(Score: 5, Funny) by Daiv on Friday October 03 2014, @05:15PM
My wife feels cold breezes when there are none, gets warm when no one else is and generally has her own sense of temperature. I'll love to buy one of these for her so she can stop complaining about at least one thing...
(Score: 1) by BananaPhone on Friday October 03 2014, @07:28PM
It's called menopause.
eitherway, it would help alot of people.
$10K though is way too much.
(Score: 2) by Daiv on Saturday October 04 2014, @05:31PM
She's 30 and definitely not menopausal, but agree this would help a great number of people. At anything near $200, a nice aesthetic and decent battery life, this is absolutely a great product. I would hope that no company would expect anyone to pay $10k/piece. I thought that was only the prize money for inventing it. The article says it cost $50 in off the shelf parts to build. Where is the $10k from?
(Score: 2) by danomac on Friday October 03 2014, @11:36PM
That's right, no complaints. The temperature had not changed at all. So in the summertime I lowered it 2 degrees. Same thing. It's nice having the same temperature in the building year round.
Whoever invents a thermostat that can predict what women are thinking and adjust the temperature display accordingly before they go look at it will make a killing...
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday October 04 2014, @07:53PM
The building I spent the last ten years of my career in was horrible. The reason was that it was such a damned big building that the outside air could heat up or cool down a hell of a lot faster than the HVAC could. So one day I'd be trying to type wearing a coat and gloves and the next I'd be sweating in a t-shirt.
Now the only thing that makes me too hot or too cold is my own loathing of the energy bills. Nonetheless, it would help. Rather than turning on the A/C when it's 83, on at 87. Rather than the heat at 68, it could be set to 60 and be comfortable.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by jbWolf on Monday October 06 2014, @09:53AM
My story: About 10 or so years ago, the AC guy was coming around our cubeville and adjusting the AC vents. He asked me and the guy next to me what we thought about the temperature. I told him it was too cold. My colleague said he was always too hot. We looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and said about the same time, "Temperature's fine."
www.jb-wolf.com [jb-wolf.com]
(Score: 1) by citizenr on Saturday October 04 2014, @12:33AM
DONT buy it. She will make you wear one while she plays with aircon all day _complaining loudly_
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Friday October 03 2014, @05:29PM
This thing was announced several years ago, and even the TFA is a year old, and it still hasn't made it past the curiosity stage.
So why are we wasting time on this?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday October 03 2014, @06:14PM
It was new to me, and apparently the editors as well.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Friday October 03 2014, @06:48PM
Well that's why articles on the web have DATES.
But I've almost fallen into the same trap. I had a story all written up, complete with supporting links, only to notice the principal link was from 2012. Did a bit more googling (using the link search feature [google.com] and found out it had been covered by everyone and their brother years ago. It was new to me, but I dropped the story anyway.
These people have actually tried to sell this as a real product: http://www.embrlabs.com/ [embrlabs.com] but that site has been dormant for quite a while.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mrclisdue on Friday October 03 2014, @06:28PM
Well, how often does one get to use the verb "obsolesce"?
plus, it's a cool story, fro'
cheers,
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03 2014, @05:38PM
Okay, so this seems very similar to a device I read about before. (Found it, looks like it's actually the same article on the same device: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/10/17/1654211/a-thermoelectric-bracelet-to-maintain-a-comfortable-body-temperature [slashdot.org]) This will not replace air conditioning - it doesn't actually make you cooler, and you will still die if you stay too long in areas that are too hot, or get hypothermia if you stay in the cold. It somewhat adjusts the temperature that you feel comfortable. Useful if there's a fight over turning the AC on at 80 degrees F or the heat at 60 degrees F. Not going to save you if it's 110 degrees F or 40 degrees F.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday October 03 2014, @06:01PM
This device only seems to fool your bodies sense of the temperature and not deal with the real temperature. And even if you would like to cool your body. You would need cooling fluid circulation and a thermal pump which translates into weight (and cost!). For cooling the thermal pump will remove 2/3 of your power with 1/3 electricity. So 100 W cooling requires 50 W electricity and perhaps a fan to cool the hot side of the thermal pump. That would require in the ballpark of 12 laptop batteries for an 8 hour runtime. Most likely a weight of 20 kg and perhaps 2000 US$ to get rid of 100 W during a working day.
Anyone has an idea how much cooling power one needs to cool a normal adult to comfort temperature in say Texas during a hot summer day?
And one has to be cautious to not exceed certain thermal limits to avoid bodily collapse!
(Score: 2) by strattitarius on Friday October 03 2014, @06:56PM
Hand warmers are the only option for staying warm that I know of (and more clothes).
Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday October 03 2014, @08:13PM
Some people may prefer to have control over the amount of cooling power and not getting wet.
(Score: 2) by strattitarius on Saturday October 04 2014, @12:21PM
Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday October 03 2014, @09:57PM
For cooling down: If you have an ice cube, put it on top of your head, and you'll cool right off as the cold water gets into your hair.
For warming up: Tea, earl grey, hot.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday October 04 2014, @07:56PM
Part of this is energy savings. That wrist strap would use very little electricity, it takes a lot of electricity to freeze water.
Plus, that ice will do you no good if you're already cold.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Informative) by TheLink on Friday October 03 2014, @07:00PM
What you're looking for is this:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/august/cooling-glove-research-082912.html [stanford.edu]
http://peninsulapress.com/2014/04/17/avacore-cooling-glove/ [peninsulapress.com]
Other cool stuff here: http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/bemore.html [wired.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday October 03 2014, @06:19PM
When I saw that Wired headline in Google News I thought, "What? We're going to have to convert our devices to direct current? And how would that work without the extreme line loss DC has?"
I had to read a little of the article to realize that they meant air conditioning. Wired's editors clearly aren't nerds.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday October 03 2014, @06:33PM
Usually I see the written abbreviation for air conditioning given as "A/C".
You know you've been on Slashdot too long when...you see "AC" and your first thought is "Anonymous Coward."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday October 04 2014, @07:59PM
Well, I've been playing with and learning about electricity since the early 1960s, but slashdot only since the late 1990s. So AC is still alternating current to me.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03 2014, @06:52PM
There's this thing that you pedants know about but intentionally ignore called "context". Context is everything - it is thanks to context that we can have pronouns, abbreviations, and other things that make language much more convenient and tolerable. You may want to live in a world where everyone speaks in the third person and always repeats the topic and object which is being discussed in every single sentence, but nobody else does.
When "AC" is used in a sentence talking about temperature, its almost sure to be referring to "air conditioning". The only time a normal person would expect "AC" to stand for "alternating current" is when talking about "power".
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday October 04 2014, @08:00PM
There was no context, you dumb alternating current air conditioner! All I had was the headline.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03 2014, @07:06PM
the very first two lines of the wired article:
"The Wristify prototype is a personal climate-controlling wearable. Image: Wristify
Here’s a scary statistic: In 2007, 87 percent of households in the U.S. used air conditioning, compared to just 11 percent of households in Brazil and a mere 2 percent in India."
Wired's editors clearly are smarter than nerds.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday October 04 2014, @08:01PM
Yep, that's how far I had to read, but the headline that linked there had only the headline.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by dcollins on Friday October 03 2014, @06:28PM
Are there versions to make sure all my cats, dogs, house pigs, etc. don't overheat? (Among all the other problems.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03 2014, @07:01PM
s/t
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03 2014, @07:04PM
O.K. - so we'll still need AC to not freeze to death or die of heat exhaustion.
Still, if these devices could allow people to perceive comfort in the range of 60F to 85F, that would amount to a tremendous savings in AC power expenditure - significant portions of the year that no conditioning is required, and dramatically reduced costs during additional significant portions of the year.
Unless you live in Minnesota, or West Texas...
(Score: 1) by deterioration on Friday October 03 2014, @07:11PM
One wonders what long term effects this would have on the body's ability to correctly maintain homeostasis. Continual 'override!' messages might also create a tolerance effect, so you'll either have to move the location of the device on the body over time, or increase the pulse's differential temperature.
I'm thinking over-reliance on something like this could end up running your internal organs too hot or too cold?